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Animated Atrocities 25/Transcript
Oh my god, how do you botch up a moral this badly?! Let me rephrase that. In a series that could handle serious issues like Alzheimer's, dyslexia, and even cancer, with maturity for children, how the hell do you botch up a moral as simple as "violence is wrong?" I haven't watched Arthur in like a decade and a half, so I'm mostly going from memory here. It's not that it's a bad show. Hell, in about a week, it's going to be entering its seventeenth season. Yeah, both Arthur and the Magic School Bus are cartoons that are just as good as you remember them. With that being said, onto this particular episode, which is a very... tricky subject to tackle. Enough beating around the bush. Let's take a look at "Arthur's Big Hit" and see what happens when a character tries to retaliate against a Karma Houdini. It starts at a boxing match of all places where Arthur is about to fight. He's confident that he's going to win. However, the challenger happens to be his little sister D.W. If I recall, most Arthur episodes started out with these odd scenarios, so I'm not going to complain. Although this one turns out to be really strange... There ends up being a D.W. in the audience, and the one in the ring happens to be Binky in disguise. He's, I guess, the school bully? Apparently they figured that Arthur would rather fight someone his own size. While Binky chases Arthur around the ring, we cut to seeing D.W. in the audience, laughing and eating popcorn, foreshadowing the main problem with the episode, which we will get to. The camera pans over pieces of a model plane and D.W. starts asking about it, annoying Arthur. The episode puts great emphasis on her annoyance. Trust me. She spills his paint and then sometime later she sneaks into Arthur's room and touches the plane while the paint is wet. Then she blames Arthur for getting paint on her hands. Okay, kids. Let's play a game called count the dumb decisions. Dumb decision #1: Arthur not telling their parents about D.W. repeatedly sneaking into his room and messing with his model plane. Finally, Arthur's finished the plane, and we immediately get dumb decision #2: him not anticipating that D.W. will come into his room and try to play with his model plane again. Speaking of that, dumb decision #3: Arthur not explaining exactly why D.W. shouldn't touch the model plane. Oh, that's right. They can't do that because they want to make Arthur indisputably the bad guy in this episode. Writers, it doesn't work that way. It just Arthur seem out of character and completely stupid. Oh, what a shocker. D.W. goes into Arthur's room and starts playing with his model plane. And then she tosses it out the window. Writers' dumb decision #... 2, I guess: showing how painstakingly long it took Arthur to make the model plane, and how much D.W. annoyed him through the process. I know why they did it; to make a normally calm, collected guy break, but unfortunately it resulted of sympathy's going to the wrong character. She goes downstairs and says that Arthur made the plane all wrong. Not "Um, Arthur... I broke it." Not "Sorry, Arthur, but..." She just said that Arthur made the plane wrong. In her head, she is not responsible for breaking Arthur's belongings. He goes outside as a storm is brewing for dramatic effect, and see that the plane is broken. D.W. keeps blaming Arthur for the broken plane, and then he hits D.W. Writers' mistake #3: making people sympathize with someone hitting a little girl. I gotta admit, writers, that takes some talent. You gotta make that little girl REALLY unlikeable for that to happen. And I'm talking Elmira level of unlikable. She goes inside and tells the parents. By the way, she screams louder when cold ice touches her arm than she did when Arthur... ah... hit her. Now here's where things get muddled. Arthur doesn't want to apologize because he told D.W. a million times not to touch the plane. Once again, if you find yourself in that situation, tell your parents. Arthur gets grounded. Arthur: WHAT?! That is so unfair! You don't even care what she did to me! Mrs. Read: We'll deal with what she did. Writers' mistake #4: not showing how they deal with D.W. It seems like she doesn't get any consequences for the entire episode, so it ends up teaching a lesson that you can break people's stuff and not fear any repercussions. Mrs. Read: What you did is wrong too. That's right. Two wrongs don't make a right. Remember that! It's gonna come back later... The next day after the storm disappeared, I guess, Arthur tells Buster about the situation, who sides with D.W. H...Hey, writers? You're supposed to make the audience do that, not the other characters. Making Arthur's best friends side against him is going against that goal. Binky hears the story and is shocked. His friends tell him that he shouldn't be shocked because he hits people all the time. Then they realize that they don't remember the last time he hit anyone. He gets challenged to hitting the next person who rounds the corner. Guess who. Yeah, it turns out to be Arthur. But Binky doesn't want to hit Arthur, so he tries to talk his way out. Unfortunately if he doesn't hit Arthur, he'll be out of their circle of friends, so he has to hit Arthur the next time he sees him. So he decides to avoid Arthur entirely. Meanwhile, we see Arthur trying in vain to help other people see his side of the story. The episode just gets messier. This goes on for quite some time, by the way. H...Hey writers, you know what this filler could be better used for? Making sure you get your damn moral right! Maybe having Arthur talk to his parents about D.W. annoying him? Maybe get D.W.'s side of the story? Or how about anything else? It ends with Arthur running to Binky to give him his pen. So all that was totally pointless. So then Binky hits Arthur in the arm. He goes to his parents, who have absolutely no sympathy for Arthur. Mr. Read: Well, maybe that's how D.W. felt when you punched her. Haha, you're being physically bullied at school. Karma's a bitch, huh, son? '''Arthur: '''I'm sorry I hit you. '''DW: '''And I'm sorry that I broke your plane...but what kind of a stupid plane doesn't fly? Did you have to add that line, writers?! Really?! '''DW: '''I'm just a child! Give me a break! NOT...AN...EXCUSE. First off, technically speaking, Arthur's a child, too. And secondly, we teach... Category:Transcripts